


Lost My Mind (But I Found You)

by shinee5



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: (kind of), AFTG Reverse Big Bang 2019, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Amnesia, Cyborg!AU, M/M, some violence, takes place in a fictional world in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 12:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18031454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinee5/pseuds/shinee5
Summary: In Easthaven, Kingdom of Achaea, a boy awakes with no remembrance of his past life.Meanwhile, in the deserted borderland, the Foxes prepare for a revolution, and the boy with the metal limbs might be just what they need.[A Cyborg!AU, written for@bookhangover]





	1. PART 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookhangover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhangover/gifts).



> It's finally time to post my piece for the AFTG Reverse Big Bang 2019!!
> 
> I'm really excited to share this with you, and hope you enjoy!
> 
> This fic was developed based on [@bookhangover's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhangover/) amazing artwork! Please take a look at it on tumblr [here](http://cats-are-assholes.tumblr.com/post/183295754989/my-cyborgau-for-the-aftgreverse-got-picked-by), don't forget to like and reblog! Also note that there is more art coming - stay tuned to see Neil - and both of them together!
> 
> It was such a pleasure working with you, Val! Thank you for letting me use your art to write this fic, for letting me know what you liked about it, and most of all thank you for being so patient with me! Dankeschön, es hat echt Spaß gemacht<3
> 
> Also a huge thank you to Gabriella for organising this whole event and of course to [@PearlAquaBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PearlAquaBlue) for beta-reading!
> 
> If anyone needs to know specific warnings before reading, please find me on [tumblr](https://franzithebookworm.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Enjoy reading!

PART 1

The steady beeping of a machine is the first thing he hears when he wakes up.

Slowly, as his eyes flutter open, he becomes aware of a dull ache at the back of his head and his thighs.

Frowning, he blinks and lets his eyes adjust to the unfamiliar room. The undecorated white walls, the machine that is still beeping rhythmically, and the bed that he is lying in suggest that it is located in a hospital.

He sits up, trying to figure out how he got here, but his mind is riddled with confusion to the point where he isn’t even able to recall his own name.

A voice in his head that seems familiar but that he is unable to place screams at him to get up, to run as fast as he can, but when he moves away the thin white blanket covering his legs, he finds metal instead of flesh, glistening bright in stark contrast to the dull room.

He moves in panic and promptly falls off the bed, his body not used to the new appendages. 

A blinding pain shoots through his brain, and he retches onto the floor until there’s hectic motion around him and skilled hands pull him back up onto the bed again.

A nurse cleans him up, injects a needle into his arm.

He falls asleep before he can manage to form any kind of coherent thought.

***

The next time he’s awake, various doctors come into the room to evaluate his condition.

He doesn’t remember anything.  
Not who he is, not how he ended up here.

He was in an accident, they say. Lost both his legs and got away with burns on his face and arms from the explosion. 

He doesn’t recall any explosions or accidents, not even the pain that he now feels only faintly thanks to the drugs they keep giving him and the healing that his body has already done during the medically induced coma they put him in.

They found him without any identification, and no one has come to look for him.

It’s as if he doesn’t exist, has never existed.

How can he, when his past is so far out of his reach his brain feels like it’s going to burst at its seams everytime he tries to think about it.

He spends most of his time practicing to use his new cybernetic legs or looking out of the window instead.

The view isn’t very informative; the street dozens of metres below and the magnetic train that occasionally whizzes past just one floor above him don’t indicate any specific location. 

Every major town in Achaea looks the same after all, he thinks with absolute certainty - though where this certainty stems from he has no idea. He briefly wonders whether he has been to any other cities in the past, but is stopped once again by a vicious headache.

The only interesting thing, then, that he can spot from his perch on the windowsill is a huge billboard that is spread out over the side of the opposite building. 

MISSING PERSON, it states in bold black letters on a red background, the Raven emblem of the Moriyama Family as always prevalent in the corner. Beneath, the picture of a young man stares at him, one side of his face completely made of metal, the other a dark olive with a single bright green eye. Under the image, another line of text says: KEVIN DAY, HEIR OF EXY TECHNOLOGIES. LAST SEEN 25/12/2122.

A quick look at the clock in another corner of the billboard tells him that this guy has been missing for three years already. 

He thinks vaguely that he has heard of this man before, but gets distracted when the billboard changes to show news, weather reports and even more missing persons posters, the changing lights filling his room with colour and shadows.

Kevin Day always returns, though. One day, he is so bored out of his mind that he counts how many times his poster makes an appearance. 

He is interrupted at the two hundred mark when the doctors come back for another round of tests.

He still can’t remember his name, but they’ve generated a new one for him along with an identification number.

He’s Neil Josten now. ID 100305113103.

We’re sending you to Evermore. It’s a training facility, they say, and something about this statement doesn’t sound right to him but he’s too drowsy to do anything about it.

They’ve shot something through his veins again, something that makes a far-off instinct in his mind tell him he needs to stay alert, but it’s too late -

He drowns in unconsciousness once more.

***

_Run._

_Don’t look back._

_Don’t slow down._

_Don’t trust anyone._

_Abram, are you listening to me?_

***

“Yes, I’m listening, Mom,” he says. 

Seconds later the all-too familiar headache jolts through his brain, and he is left wondering what the hell this was - a flashback, maybe? Or just a dream his drugged mind came up with?

“Not your mom,” a decidedly not female voice answers, and Neil whips his head around to find its source, all thoughts about who “Abram” and “Mom” might be forgotten.

To his surprise, he isn’t in his hospital room anymore, but in a much more shabby chamber, although he is once again connected to some kind of monitoring device and is still clad in his hospital-issued sweatpants and shirt.

His eyes finally land on a dark-skinned boy who is leaning against the wall across from him, metal gleaming from both his arms.

The other smiles at him and then opens a door to the left to shout: “Coach! He’s up!”

Right. Evermore. The training facility.

It probably makes sense that someone called “Coach” would be here, Neil thinks.

It doesn’t take long for an older man to barge in, followed closely by a woman about the same age, but appearing much calmer.

“Thank you, Matt,” she tells the boy who had called them in, while the man examines Neil from head to toe.

Matt excuses himself, and the woman directs her friendly gaze to Neil as well.

“Welcome to the Foxhole,” she says with a welcoming smile.

He frowns. “Is that another name for Evermore?”

The man laughs, short and humourlessly. “No, and you’re lucky that you’re not there right now, believe me.”

“So what, you just kidnapped me from the hospital so they wouldn’t send me there? Who even are you?” Neil asks, slightly irritated.

“You got the gist of it, kiddo. I’m David Wymack, by the way, and this is Betsy Dobson, our counselor,” the man responds and then gets out a datapad where he scrolls for a while until he finds what he’s looking for.

“Ah, so this is the info Abby gave us on you: You’re Neil Josten, real name and age unknown, and you’re suffering from retrograde amnesia at the moment.”

“I already know all of that,” Neil bites out. He really doesn’t want to think about his memory problem again, and besides there are far more important issues here. “Care to explain what the fuck is going on, perhaps?”

Wymack raises an eyebrow, but he seems rather amused by Neil’s attitude. 

“Do you feel fit enough to stand up?” he asks, evading the question for now.

Wordlessly, Neil swings his metal legs over the edge of the bed and rips the monitoring sensors off his chest.

“No need to get that rough,” Dobson says.

“You don’t exactly need more injuries,” Wymack agrees and leads the way out of the chamber.

It’s a weird sensation to walk with his new legs, Neil thinks as he follows the two of them into a narrow hallway which is painted in a bright orange. Although he is fully capable of moving them, he can’t feel his feet hitting the floor. The only thing that tells him every move is going as planned is his sight and the vibration each step sends up his thighs. The metal parts shift almost silently, although he assumes this will change as they get older.

He is interrupted in his musings as Wymack and Dobson turn to the left, where the hallway opens into an open lounge, rickety chairs and old beanbags scattered throughout and a screen embedded into the opposite wall.

At a desk in the right far corner, a man is drawing something on a datapad with his right hand, the silver left holding the device in place. His orange hoodie hides his face, until he turns around and Neil stares at the metal that covers one half of it.

“I know you,” he breathes out. 

“You’re not the first one to tell me that,” Kevin Day says, crossing his arms. “And who are you?”

“Kevin, meet our newcomer, Neil Josten,” Dobson introduces him.

“He asked what was going on and I figured it would be easiest to explain everything with your help,” Wymack adds. “By the way, how are the plans for the Nest coming along?”

“I’d rather not talk about these things until we’re sure he’s on our side,” Kevin replies.

Wymack rolls his eyes but doesn’t ask again.

“Neil, sit down if you want to. This could take some time and I bet you’re not used to standing longer than twenty minutes on those new legs of yours,” he tells him.

After some consideration, Neil lowers himself onto one of the beanbags while Dobson joins Kevin at the desk and Wymack moves to stand in front of the dark screen.

“Alright, Neil, what do you know about Achaea and Troy?” he asks, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants.

“I may have trouble remembering who I am, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how the world works,” Neil answers, but Wymack keeps looking at him expectantly, so he continues with a sigh.

“They’re the two remaining kingdoms on our planet, and they’ve been at war with each other for decades,” he says. “The Moriyama family and the Hatford family are fighting against each other, although nobody really knows why.”

“Wrong,” Wymack replies. “We do know the reason. And that’s where Kevin comes in.”

The boy that Neil knows all too well from the missing persons’ posters nods. The way he keeps tapping his foot on the floor and Dobson’s calming hand on his shoulders are the only signs that this conversation might be making him nervous.

“I grew up at the Nest, the Moriyama’s headquarters,” he says, keeping his stare fixed on his left hand. “Around the time of my birth, my mother developed new cyber technologies and founded her own company with generous funds from the government. When her first lab went up in flames, she was caught inside with me and I was the only one to survive.” 

A violent shudder prevents him from speaking as he seems to remember his past. “That’s what happened to my face, if you were wondering,” he continues after a moment, finally lifting his gaze to meet Neil’s eyes. 

“Afterwards, the Moriyamas completely took over Exy Technologies, as she had called it. I was raised to be the CEO in a far away future, while Tetsuji Moriyama, the king’s brother, accepted the position in the meantime. Now, Stuart Hatford of Troy had heard of my mom’s inventions and disagreed with Tetsuji on how to put them to use.”

“You see, Stuart believes that cyber tech should only be used to restore lost functions or limbs, while Tetsuji is in favour of enhancing his cyborgs’ abilities, especially for military purposes,” Wymack chimes in. “As you might know, the Moriyamas actually recruit volunteers who undergo surgery to become cyborgs and fight in the army.”

Neil nods. It’s not something that he remembers from the past, like he does with most facts about the world that he lives in, but he’s seen the advertisements on the billboard that were promoting the recruitment by appealing to the citizens’ duty to fight for their country. He can’t quite comprehend how anyone could want to submit themselves to something like this voluntarily, but apparently the propaganda is working.

“Anyway, the Hatfords and the Moriyamas had always had their disagreements, but this is where they really stopped seeing eye to eye,” Wymack continues. “And it only got worse when Kevin disappeared.”

Neil shoots a curious glance to the other boy. “If you were supposed to be the next CEO and all, why did you go missing?”

Kevin takes a deep breath. “Because of this,” he says and lifts his left hand, the metal parts reflecting the light from the lamp above their heads. 

“I didn’t choose to get a new hand - or to lose my real one, that is.” He closes his eyes briefly, the silver eyelid on his right in stark contrast to the one that’s muscle and skin. Then, he shrugs off the counselor’s hand on his shoulder and stands up.

“I need a drink,” he mutters, ignoring the worried look Dobson sends his way. “You guys can finish briefing him without me.”

He disappears out of the lounge and into the hallway, leaving silence in his wake. 

It’s Dobson who breaks it again. “He came to us three years ago with clear signs of abuse,” she says quietly. “The Moriyamas were using him as their very own guinea pig. They didn’t have to make his face metal; there are many other methods to heal severe burns, after all. And they definitely didn’t have to amputate his hand.”

At this point, Neil feels as if he’s about to vomit. Even before he’d had all of this information, he instinctively knew that something about the Moriyama family was not right. But to hear how far they are willing to go to advance their technology is horrifying.

Wymack sighs, scrubbing a hand through his face. “The good thing was that I was already working as a spy for Troy at that point. I provided them with information and with the know-how of cyborg technology - after all, Kevin’s mother and I had worked together on it for a long time. When I informed them of the human experiments the Moriyamas were conducting, the conflict between the two kingdoms took on another level.”

“Okay,” Neil interrupts. “We’ve covered why they’re at war, now. But I still have no idea what all of this has to do with me being here.”

Dobson straightens from where she is leaning against the desk. “I’ll tell you soon enough - but I’d like to show you around first, if that’s alright with you.”

He narrows his eyes at her. Something about her makes his skin crawl - she’s too soft and too knowing at the same time. It feels like she can see right through him and discover things about himself that he should know but that he has forgotten.

There’s not really any other choice but to follow her, though, he guesses and stands up from the beanbag with a little difficulty.

The both of them walk back where they came from earlier, while Wymack stays behind to take care of something else. 

Dobson gestures towards a pair of doors to the left. “Behind this you’ll find our Research and Development Center,” she says. “David and Kevin are always trying to find ways to improve the current technology - and you’ll get your equipment there as well.”

Before Neil can ask any questions, she continues to the next set of doors.

“This is our training gym and the adjoined locker room. You’re going to see a lot more of it in the future.”

“Wait, what exactly do you want me to train for here? And what kind of equipment are you talking about?” Neil finally gets out.

Dobson stops in her tracks and turns to face him. “Neil, David mentioned before that you’re lucky the hospital didn’t transfer you to Evermore, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You see, whatever they told you Evermore was going to be is false. It is in truth Achaea’s most important military base, where they train their cyborg recruits. After Kevin arrived here, we found out through a friend - Abby - that he wasn’t the only case of mistreatment. Innocent people, citizens that didn’t volunteer to become a cyborg but had to have surgery after accidents or illnesses, just like you, were being brought to Evermore and forced to fight in a war they hadn’t signed up for.” 

The counselors eyes shine with compassion. “From that moment, we decided to stop this cruelty. Have you seen all the billboards showing missing persons?”

Neil nods. “There’s too many of them to count.”

“A lot of them are missing due to the war, but there’s also a few people that you’re going to recognise here,” Dobson says almost proudly. “With Abby’s help, who works at Easthaven hospital where Exy Tech’s headquarters are located, we’ve been kidnapping those involuntary cyborgs and we’re trying to train the ones that want to stay to sabotage the Moriyamas’ plans and infiltrate the Nest.”

“And you did just that with me,” Neil says, eyes wide. Finally all the little pieces click into place.

“Exactly,” Dobson answers and smiles reassuringly. “So, are you going to stay?”

“What happens if I say no?”

“We could smuggle you into Troy, if you’d prefer that. Or you could return to your hometown, but I wouldn’t recommend it. But your freedom of choice will not be taken from you, I can promise you that.”

“I don’t even know where I come from,” Neil replies, watching her face fall as she realises her mistake. 

“I’ll think about it, alright? For now, I’ll stay,” he decides.

***

Later, he stands in his dorm room, and for the first time today he’s alone long enough to catch his breath.

Betsy Dobson had finished her tour of the Foxhole just minutes earlier, showing him the infirmary and the room he’d woken up in on the ground floor before moving to the upper floor where a kitchen area, bathrooms and dorms were located.

He feels as if all the new information he’s received today is going to make his brain explode. It’s definitely time to get some sleep.

He passes the two bunk beds - apparently he’s sharing the room with Matt and some other guy called Seth - to stand in front of the sink installed on one of the walls, and his breath stutters.

There were no mirrors at Easthaven. The only time he had come close to seeing his own face was the vague reflection of the windowpane, doused in blue or red hues depending on the light seeping in from the outside.

Here, in his dorm room, just above the sink, there is a mirror, and what is staring back at him from behind that glass is him - this is who Neil Josten is. This is how he looks like. He has dark brown hair and similarly coloured eyes that are widened in surprise. Tan skin that is interrupted by the bandages on both of his cheeks.

In wonder, Neil stretches a bandaged hand to touch his reflection.

It feels like a new beginning.

***

_Where is he?_

_Where’s that bastard?_

_I have to find him._

_I have to punish him._

_He should never have dared to run away -_

***

Neil’s eyes snap open. The first thing he notices is that he’s not in his bed anymore and he has no idea how he got here.

His heart is beating so loudly in his ears he’s sure someone must have heard him. But there’s only silence where he’s standing in the hallway, still reeling from whatever just happened.

Except - two eyes glow in the dark as something taps on quiet paws towards the kitchen.

There’s a dim light flowing out from under the door that’s left slightly ajar.

“Sir, come on,” a calm voice slips through the crack right as the creature tumbles through, slightly unbalanced. In the light, Neil finally sees that it’s a cat - although its hindpaws shine like Neil’s legs.

“I knew you were there,” the voice continues. “King’s already eating your food, you better hurry.”

Neil silently moves closer to the door, curious to see who this voice belongs to.

“I know you’re there too, newbie,” it adds like an afterthought. 

Neil flinches back, but reconsiders and decides to push open the kitchen door - he’s going to have to meet his housemates eventually, after all.

It swings open to reveal the room just as he remembers it from earlier - only with the addition of two cats and a tiny blond who lounges on the counter while he watches them eat.

Sir is happily munching away while the other - King, Neil guesses - seems to have a little trouble finding its bowl. Its left forepaw is also made of metal, he notices.

“There are cats here?” is what comes out of his mouth instead of hello.

“Obviously,” the other deadpans. He takes a bite of ice cream that Neil just now realises he’s been holding. “So, you’re the new one.”

“Neil,” Neil supplies.

The guy hums in acknowledgement.

“Andrew,” he replies after several moments. His artificial left arm moves to support him as he hops off the counter. A single black band of cloth covers half of his right for some reason.

He bends down to pet the cats before straightening and coming to a stop right in front of Neil.

Andrew looks him up and down, leaving him feeling a little like a deer in the headlights.

“Hmm,” he says after a long while. “There’s something I don’t like about you.”

Neil tries to argue, but he is stopped by an ice cream spoon pointed at him in a way that should be impossible to be as threatening as it is.

“You should know that I am very protective of what is mine,” Andrew drawls out slowly. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

Before he can ask what exactly he means by ‘mine’, the other saunters out of the room, the two cats following as if he’d called for them.

Baffled by this bizarre encounter, Neil stays in the kitchen for a while longer. He hopes not everyone will be as welcoming as this guy.

When he gets back to the dorm, his two roommates are snoring silently, unperturbed by his disappearance.

 

***

The next few days are spent with getting to know the Foxhole and its inhabitants better.

Neil is sent to the gym in the morning and evening, tries to learn from Wymack in R&D in the afternoon, and takes his turn preparing dinner for everybody, setting the table or doing the dishes, depending on the schedule that’s pinned to the refrigerator.

Luckily, the other Foxes are much friendlier than Andrew. There’s Matt and Seth, his roommates who he gets along with fairly well, except for Seth’s occasional bad moods that everyone else has to suffer through.

Then there’s the girls, who share one of the bigger dorm rooms. Dan, who apparently was the third one to be rescued by Wymack after Kevin and Andrew, hugs him enthusiastically when she first meets him. 

Renee is the next to introduce herself, offering him a hand that he shakes cautiously. The uncomfortable feeling that he had experienced with Betsy Dobson gets even worse with her, as if he’s exposed to her completely, revealing secrets to her that he doesn’t even know of. Subsequently, he tries to avoid her, but feels guilty about it when she tells him that her eyesight is enhanced after being blinded in an accident and then operated on at Easthaven. Still, it’s not easy to tolerate her intense gaze.

He learns that Renee was the one to save the two cats, Sir and King, on a mission a couple of months ago; that Thea isn’t a cyborg but brought Kevin to the Foxhole all those years ago, having worked closely together with him at the Nest; and that Allison, the last but most overwhelming of the girls, is very sensitive to noise due to her enhanced hearing. Nevertheless, she descends upon him and declares quite loudly that she’ll take care of him from now on. Seth, who is coincidentally her ex-boyfriend, shoots them a look filled with jealousy at that, and goes over to the boxing equipment to kick some punching bags.

Andrew, for his part, stays away. In the gym, he either takes turns on the weights with Kevin, or he steps into the ring in the middle of the room to spar with Renee. Noticing his curious glance, Matt lets out a laugh and explains to Neil that he shouldn’t bother to try to get Andrew to spar with him, as well. 

“Believe me, I’ve asked countless of times,” he says. “Considering we have similar cyber replacements … but he never practices with anyone else.” Neil doesn’t tell him that he has no intentions of inviting himself into Andrew’s gym sessions, but that he is merely curious about the other since their nightly rendezvous. Of course, no one else knows about that incident, and somehow, he doesn’t really want to share it with anyone, either.

Outside of the gym, he barely sees him apart from the mandatory team dinner, but occasionally, he feels a pair of eyes follow him and remembers the warning the other had given him.

He’s now much more adjusted to his new limbs, but his past remains a riddle, his memory a void that he can’t attempt to explore without suffering from piercing headaches. He’s doomed to stay “Neil Josten” for the rest of his life, never able to know his real identity.

He tries not to think about that too much, distracting himself with his daily tasks. Every once in a while, though, he wakes up from a nightmare, and it’s always the same: a woman’s voice telling him to run as fast as he can echoing in his head, leaving him panicked and confused. Other times, he’ll be fast asleep with no dreams whatsoever, only to startle awake in the kitchen, the lounge, or, on one memorable occasion, on the roof of the Foxhole. Even in daytime, he feels as if he’s not in control of his body, occasionally wandering off into the opposite direction that he intends to go in.

Luckily, no one seems to notice these strange glitches, and Neil is determined to keep it that way, not keen on turning all attention on him. 

Until - 

***

_Tonight._

_I need to do it tonight._

_It can’t wait any longer._

_This fucking traitor has already escaped me once,_

_and he never will again._

_Tonight, it’ll end._

***

\- Neil wakes up with his hands wrapped around Kevin’s neck.

***

Kevin’s face is contorted into a bizarre grimace, one side red and blue from the lack of oxygen, the other unchanging metal.

His single green eye is wide, bulging in disbelief and pain, and Neil wants it to stop, wants it to end, wants to let go, but he can’t.

His hands stay where they are, tightening their grasp on the other’s throat, pressing him against the wall of his dorm room, while he can do nothing but watch Kevin suffocate.

And what comes out of his mouth next might sound like Neil, but it is not him at all. Someone else is forcing the words out of him, turning every letter into a sharp knife intended to kill.

“Finally, I found you,” it says. “Do you really think you could escape so easily? Just vanish and never be seen again? Don’t be so naive, Kevin Day.”

Kevin gasps.

“Who -” he gets out with effort.  
“Why -”

“Silence, traitor! How dare you disobey me, how dare you disobey your master?”

A single tear rolls down Kevin’s cheek. “Don’t,” he mouths, unable to speak any longer.

“You always thought you were better than me, didn’t you? Heir of Exy, always coming up with those clever plans of yours. But you’ll always be second to me, or did you forget? I’m gonna be the one that takes over this company, and after that, the throne, and then, nobody will ever be able to stop me-”

“Are you done yet?” a bored voice asks from behind, and suddenly, there’s a very real knife pressed to his ribs while a metal arm rips away Neil’s claw-like hands.

Kevin cries out in pain as he regains his ability to breathe, sinking to the floor while Andrew drags Neil away from him.

It’s as if someone has flicked a switch inside him, and from one moment to the other Neil is able to talk again, the words flooding out of him. 

“I’m so sorry, Kevin, I don’t know what happened, I would never hurt you, this wasn’t me, please -”

_“Shut up.”_

Andrew’s voice is sharp in his ear, and his metal hand clamps itself over Neil’s mouth to stop his hysterics. If possible, he sounds even more pissed off than before.

“Kevin, go find Bee,” he tells the panting figure on the floor. “And you, come with me.”

Neither his tone nor the knife that is still mere inches away from puncturing his skin leave any room for discussion.

Andrew pushes him out of the room and up up up the stairs until they’re on the roof, the darkness of the desert night swallowing them both.

Finally, Andrew takes his hand from Neil’s mouth and forces him to turn around and face him.

His blond hair is dishevelled, his dark shirt and sweatpants rumpled, and if looks could kill, Neil would already be dead.

“Who are you?” he says, one hand still twisted in the collar of Neil’s shirt.

“I don’t know,” Neil answers truthfully.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Andrew tugs on his collar with force. “I don’t appreciate being lied to.”

“I’m not lying, I wish I could tell you who I am but I don’t remember -”

“Listen to me carefully,” Andrew interrupts him. “I already told you that I don’t trust you, and that I protect what is mine, and that includes Kevin. So explain to me why I shouldn’t just push you off this roof for hurting him and spouting nonsense that sounds a lot like something Riko would say?”

“Who is Riko?” Neil asks confused.

Andrew rolls his eyes. “So you’re saying you don’t know who Riko Moriyama is?”

“No, why should I?”

“I guess you still want to pretend that your amnesia isn’t fake, huh? Riko is the guy to blame for most of why Kevin’s so fucked up. He was always jealous of precious little Kevin, and he wanted to be the heir of Exy instead of him. Sound familiar?”

Neil swallows hard, the words that had been spoken through him earlier echoing loudly in his head. It does sound suspiciously like something one of Kevin’s abusers at the Nest could have said, what with the talk of traitors and the company.

“Now, I already have my hands full with Kevin when he’s not being immediately threatened,” Andrew continues. “Then you arrive, with your memory conveniently wiped, all innocent, and as soon as I’m not there for just a second, you’re at Kevin’s throat, nearly killing him. Do you see what that looks like from my point of view?”

Neil presses his eyes closed, takes a deep breath before answering.

“I do see what you mean, so let me explain, too. The only thing I can ask for is that you believe me, but I understand if you don’t. I will tell you everything I know. ” He opens his eyes to find Andrew looking at him expectantly. They’re incredibly close, Andrew’s hand still hooked in Neil’s shirt, their breaths mingling in the cold desert night.

“The earliest memory I have is me waking up in a hospital bed in Easthaven,” Neil starts. “Everything that is supposed to have happened before that is just - gone. If I try to think about it, I get serious headaches. And lately, I’ve been sleepwalking a lot. That was also how I ended up in the kitchen that first time we met. Tonight, I went to sleep and woke up attacking Kevin, and I couldn’t stop, I had to watch him die in front of me, and I was completely powerless, like my body was not my own -”

Caught in the memory, Neil starts to panic again. He doesn’t understand what is happening to his body, he doesn’t know how to explain it to Andrew so he will believe him, he wants this night to never have happened and he wants his memories back -

“Neil, breathe,” someone says. 

Without realising it, he’s sunk onto the floor and is on the brink of hyperventilating. But there’s a warm hand on his neck, pressing his head down and grounding him in the present.

“I can’t -” he gasps. 

“I don’t know what is happening to me -”

The owner of the hand on his neck, presumably Andrew, tells him to count his breaths, and he tries and fights to get his breathing back under control. 

Once he succeeds, Andrew huffs and starts removing his hand when it brushes against a tiny bump hidden underneath Neil’s hair just above his nape. Blinding pain shoots through Neil’s brain, and he leans forward to vomit onto the concrete.

“What the fuck is this?” Andrew says and reaches out again. Another stabbing pain is the answer, and Neil hides his head in his arms protectively.

“Don’t touch me,” he grits out against the nausea in his mind. “It hurts. So much.”

Andrew’s hand is gone so fast Neil doesn’t even register it until he is kneeling right in front of him.

“Look at me,” he says, and Neil lifts his head slowly. 

“I won’t touch you again,” Andrew promises. “For the record, I still don’t trust you. But we need to get you to Wymack to check out that thing in your neck. If you’re lucky, it will prove your innocence, and if you aren’t, I’ll finally be able to push you off this roof. Sounds like a plan, right?”

“Sure,” Neil mumbles, too exhausted to really follow Andrew’s train of thought. “I just want this to end.”

***

Wymack takes one look at the bump in his neck and says: “This is going to be complicated.”

Next thing he knows, Wymack is on a call with someone who looks a lot like Andrew - if it weren’t for the fact that the blond cyborg is sitting across from him on the countertop of the R&D room, waiting with crossed arms for the results of the examination, Neil would have thought it was him on that datapad’s screen.

“We can’t extract it without knowing what it does exactly,” Andrew’s doppelgänger says.

“Can you tell us your symptoms again?” his colleague, a dark-skinned woman in a lab coat, adds.

And so Neil starts explaining again. By the end of it, Wymack has an undecipherable look in his eyes.

“You should have told us much earlier. We could have helped you,” he says in a rough voice.

“I didn’t want you to send me away,” Neil replies quietly. “And I didn’t know if I could trust you not to do that.”

Wymack just shakes his head for a moment, looking older and more weary than ever. “You kids will be the death of me at some point. Of course you can trust us. But I get why you weren’t sure about it.”

“Can we get back to the problem here?” Andrew’s clone asks from the screen.

Wymack clears his throat. “Right. Where were we?” 

He exchanges a few looks with the others and concludes: “We’ll discuss how to proceed in the lounge - Andrew, stay with Neil until I come back.”

And so, they’re alone again.

Neither of them speaks a word, Andrew staring into the distance while Neil grips the edges of his seat and tries to stay calm. 

The burn marks on his arms have healed almost completely by now, the scar tissue pale against his skin. It occurs to him, as it has several times before, that there’s something weird about them - there’s almost a pattern to them, and they’re all perfect little circles as if placed there on purpose. He wishes he would at least remember the accident that caused them.

To distract himself from his thoughts, he decides to break the silence. “Thank you,” he says, and interprets the quirk of Andrew’s eyebrow as a sign that he is listening. “Thank you for prying me off Kevin, thank you for listening to me, and most importantly, thank you for calming me down and finding that thing in my neck.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew scoffs. “And don’t expect me to keep saving your sorry ass from these situations.”

“I know. I’ll take care of it now. Wymack will probably remove it and hopefully get rid of those episodes I’ve been having -”

Neil gags as his sentence is suddenly cut off. A cold shiver runs down his spine as he realizes that he is once more not in control of his limbs and speech - someone else has taken over.

“You’re not removing me,” he snarls and jumps up from his chair. “I will obliterate all of your base and deliver Kevin back to his place, and you will not stop me -”

He charges at Andrew, but before he can do anything, the door behind him flies open and a tranquilizer dart pierces his skin on his neck.

Neil barely has time to be thankful to Wymack for stopping his alter ego before he slips into darkness.

***

The steady beeping of a machine is the first thing he hears when he wakes up.

Slowly, as his eyes flutter open, he becomes aware of a dull ache at the back of his head.

Frowning, he blinks and lets his eyes adjust to the familiarity of the room. The shabby chamber with its orange decorations, the uncomfortable bed and Matt leaning against the wall across from him: he’s in the Foxhole’s infirmary.

While Matt opens the door and shouts for the others to come in, Neil sighs and leans back against his pillow. He feels like himself again - whoever that is.

That night, as he looks in the mirror of his dorm room, he sees a different colour emerging at the roots of his otherwise dark hair: an auburn red which seems familiar, even if he can’t fully place it yet.

It’s time for the truth to come out.


	2. PART 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, everyone!
> 
> So here's part 2 of my fic for the reverse big bang! 
> 
> Warnings for this part: canon-typical violence, very brief mention of self-harm scars
> 
> If you need any other warnings before reading, please find me on [tumblr](https://franzithebookworm.tumblr.com)!
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading!

 

PART 2 

_I lost the connection -_

_What the fuck do you mean you lost it?_

_You were supposed to be subtle, work undercover without being discovered, and most importantly give us more information about these people -_

_and instead the only thing you managed to do was to find Kevin and to attack him, ignoring all of your orders?_

_Just wait until your brother hears of this -_

***

“What are you grinning at?” Allison says, startling Neil out of where he is playing with his utensils.

“Oh, nothing,” he responds cheekily. “Just listening to Riko getting in trouble because of us.”

Allison laughs loudly at that.

“That’s the spirit, Josten,” Dan says as she sets down a big casserole in front of them. 

“Dinner’s ready!” she shouts into the general direction of the hallway.

Allison winces from the noise and Dan throws her an apologetic look while the rest of the Foxes fill inside the kitchen.

It’s only been a few days since the whole attacking-people-debacle, but Neil already feels so much more comfortable with the inhabitants of the Foxhole. 

After Wymack had knocked him out with that tranquilizer, he and who he now knows to be Andrew’s twin Aaron and his girlfriend Katelyn had gotten to work quickly. 

They removed the thing from his neck, which turned out to be a microchip through which Riko Moriyama had been spying on the Foxes, and hacked it so that instead, Neil is now able to listen in on his conversations while Riko is unable to take control of Neil.

By reconfiguring the chip they also unblocked Neil’s memories, and they’ve since started coming back slowly in seemingly unrelated pieces that he can’t make sense of yet.

They also discovered that he had implanted contacts that functioned as a camera for Riko to see what Neil saw, and when they removed those, Neil found himself with piercing blue eyes instead of the dark brown he was used to.

So there he is, new Neil, feeling much less confused and like an intruder in this refuge in the desert, and he listens to Riko getting yelled at by his superiors as he digs into Dan’s casserole.

Life couldn’t be better right now.

***

“You need to focus more on your arms, dude,” Matt tells him once they’ve finished sparring and Neil is completely spent. “Your legs are your main asset, but how are you going to fight someone like me if your arms continue to look like sticks?”

Neil huffs a laugh and gulps down a tremendous amount of water. “I don’t have a chance against your steel arms, and you know it.”

Truth to be told, he just likes training his legs more, loves the feeling a good long run on the treadmill gives him. He wishes they were allowed to go outside so he could actually run out in the open. It feels familiar, too, as if he’d done this a lot in his past.

“After our break, we can go lift weights and I’ll spot you, alright?” Matt says and Neil agrees easily.

They’re interrupted when Wymack sticks his head inside the gym. “Everyone come to the lobby. We have visitors!”

All of the foxes that are currently training filter into the lobby, all sweaty from their workout but not having the time to shower, and find themselves faced with a whole Trojan delegation.

“Alright, so this is Captain Jeremy Knox, he’s here to get a little update on where we stand and how soon we can move forward,” Wymack tells them.

Knox lifts his cap in greeting. He’s tall, with sun-kissed skin and blond hair peeking out under his uniform. “Looking good, Wymack,” he says. “So how’s the plan coming along?” 

“We need a bit more time to figure out the details,” Wymack answers, and soon they’re deep in conversation, while the Trojans and Foxes eye each other with caution.

“Come on, let’s see if you’re really ready for this,” one of the Trojan soldiers suddenly pipes up. “I’m Alvarez, and these are Dermott and Moreau,” she introduces her colleagues.

That’s how they find themselves back in the gym, facing members of the Trojan army.

It’s almost fun, Neil supposes, if it weren’t for the fact that this is going to be deadly serious in the real fight that awaits them.

Wymack calls them back outside a few hours later, and lets them know that they will receive a few more resources and weapons soon and that Knox seems very pleased with the development at the Foxhole, especially with Neil’s ability to spy on the Moriyamas.

Neil’s skin crawls as the attention focuses on him, and he soon finds a way to slip away to finally take a shower and get some rest.

When he emerges from his dorm after a short nap, he hears voices coming from the kitchen and follows them until he sees Betsy and Andrew seated at the kitchen table while Sir and King, always present in Andrew’s proximity, have planted themselves on their laps. Two mugs filled with hot chocolate and heaps of whipped cream on top sit in front of them.

“So this is why our supplies need to be restocked so often?” Neil asks drily. “Do you really need this much cream?”

Andrew doesn’t deign that with a response, choosing to take a huge sip of the monstrosity in front of him instead.

“Yeah, thought so,” Neil grins. By now, he’s used to this version of Andrew: one that doesn’t suspect him of being a threat anymore, but does the absolute most to annoy him nonetheless.

“What are you guys doing?” he asks, not really expecting an answer while he starts looking for pots and pans so he can begin preparing dinner.

“Sometimes it’s nice to have a little time to relax and decompress,” Betsy answers and gently strokes through Sir’s thick fur. “You all have been working very hard, lately.”

She’s right - with the constant surveillance of the Moriyamas, paired with the training and planning that has intensified immensely, Neil hasn’t had that much time to breathe. The nap he just had was very much needed, indeed.

“Andrew, I believe it’s your turn to set the table tonight,” Betsy interrupts his thoughts. “I’ll leave you guys to it,” she continues and places Sir on the ground before standing up and taking her drink with her.

Andrew looks after her for a moment before turning back to where King is purring on his lap. “Oh, Bee,” he says. “Always meddling, isn’t she?”

Neil decides not to respond to that, first of all because he has no idea what Andrew is talking about, and second of all because he’s pretty sure Andrew was talking to the cat and not him.

But he is curious enough to ask: “You call her Bee? I didn’t know you were that close.”

Andrew just raises an eyebrow. “It’s not like you’ve been here long enough to notice.”

“More like I never see you around and if you are you barely interact with anyone besides Kevin and Renee,” Neil answers and pulls out a bag of rice from the pantry.

When there’s just silence from Andrew’s side, even after Neil has finished setting up the rice cooker, he decides to do something about it.

“Listen,” he says, rounding the table to face Andrew. “I want to know more about you, and I’m sure you want the same as well. How else are we going to trust each other when it comes down to our mission here, if we don’t talk to each other?” 

If he’s honest, that’s not even the only reason why Neil wants to talk to Andrew. He still remembers the way Andrew had calmed him down from his panic attack on the roof with only his voice and the weight of his hand on his hand, and the way he’d retreated immediately when Neil had asked him to. Something about the other’s behaviour draws him in and he needs to figure out what it is.

“So, I propose a deal,” he continues, fixing Andrew’s unmoving eyes with his own. “Truth for a truth. I’ll answer your questions if you do the same for me.”

Andrew seems to consider this for a while, and then he concedes: “Deal.”

“I’ll start,” Neil says, withdrawing from the table and going back to chop up some vegetables.

“What can you offer me?” Andrew asks. “You don’t have any memories, or did you forget that too?”

“Funny,” Neil responds. “I’ve actually been getting some of them back lately. I can tell you one thing for sure: I didn’t have a nice, calm life before that accident.”

“I doubt any of us can say that,” Andrew supplies.

“I doubt you were all on the run from someone half of your life,” Neil says, and when that seems to shut Andrew up, he continues: “I keep having these flashbacks to hiding in run-down barracks, to running as fast as I can to catch the next train because if I didn’t I was sure I would die, to keeping a weapon under my makeshift pillow at all times to defend myself. And I wasn’t alone. There’s this woman that always appears in my memories, she might be a relative, but I can’t be sure. And I haven’t figured out yet what I was running from, there’s still a lot of pieces missing …”

He trails off, letting the chopped vegetables fall into a pan to cook them.

“I see,” Andrew says, and suddenly he’s standing right next to him, taking plates out of the cabinet to set the table. “What do you want to know, then?”

Neil leans against the counter in thought before he decides on a question he’s been meaning to ask for a while.

“Why does Aaron live in Troy and you don’t?”

“Technically, those are two questions, but I’ll tolerate it for now,” Andrew answers. He’s silent for a bit while he sets the plates down, King and Sir weaving through his legs as he walks. 

“Aaron and I aren’t that close,” he says eventually. “We didn’t grow up together, and I’d lived with him only for a year before I had the accident that led to this.” He gestures with his metal left arm. “When Coach brought me here, he asked if I wanted to go back to him. I said no. Kevin had already convinced me to stay here. Instead, I told him to smuggle Aaron to Troy. It turned out that in the meantime our cousin Nicky had taken care of him, so Wymack arranged for both of them to be brought to Troy when they agreed.”

Neil makes a mental note to ask about Andrew’s relationship to Kevin the next time, and says: “If you care enough to tell Coach to get him out of the country, you might be closer than you like to pretend.” 

Andrew doesn’t answer, just puts down the silverware with more force than strictly necessary.

“Let’s not do this again,” he says and strides out of the kitchen.

Neil just smiles to himself and turns back to his meal. It’s a first step.

***

_Nathaniel._

_Why can’t you behave when I tell you to?_

_I told you to stay quiet, didn’t I?_

_No. Not the knives. Please -_

_You see now what happens when you go against my orders?_

_Next time, I’ll send you to your father, and you know what that means._

***

Neil’s latest flashback is still bothering him when half of the Foxes are called on a mission to sabotage a couple of Achaean bombers.

Renee, Allison, Seth, Andrew and him all file into one of the hovercars disguised as one of the Achaean army’s and drive out of the valley in the desert that the Foxhole is hidden in, making their way up to one of the many army bases on the border.

They park their hovercar a few miles away and hide it as well as they can, before making their way to the camp, slipping through the darkness until they reach the parked planes.

Splitting up, they make quick work of the bombers, destroying their engines and making sure they don’t leave any traces.

Andrew is the only one already at their hidden car when Neil has finished up and made his way back, so he decides to take his chance.

It’s dark, the stars twinkling from the night sky the only source of light, if it weren’t for the warm glow of the lantern Andrew has just lit, illuminating his sharp jawline and setting fire to his hazel eyes.

Neil clears his throat before he starts: “I know you said not to do this again, but I want to tell you another memory.”

Andrew rolls his eyes in response. “I shouldn’t be surprised - I’ve seen you worry about this the whole ride here,” he sighs. “Clearly I can’t tell you what to do, so let’s get this over with.”

“Okay, so, here’s another truth about me,” Neil says and takes a deep breath. “I’m not Neil. I’m Nathaniel.”

Andrew, who was more focussed on guarding their position until now, turns his head to stare at Neil.

“So, you found out your real name? Is that all?”

It’s like a dam has broke. Now that he has freed himself of the weight of his name, he tells Andrew everything else that he’s seen in hushed whispers, not wanting to reveal their location to the soldiers sleeping soundly a few miles away: the woman whose name he doesn’t recall, who punished him and carved him open with her knives, the fear that had rushed through him when thinking of his father, as if being confronted with him would be even worse than being cut up by this strange woman …

“I think I had a very good reason for running away,” he finishes.

Andrew hasn’t reacted much besides staring at him and listening, but somehow his calm acceptance of anything and everything that Neil tells him is comforting.

“Can I take a turn?” he asks.

When Andrew gestures for him to continue, he says: “How did Kevin convince you to stay?”

“I was the first to arrive at the Foxhole after Thea had dragged Kevin there. Kevin … was a mess, even more so than he is now. But he was also desperate for his plan with Wymack to destroy the Moriyamas to work, so he told me he would … he would give me something to live for. I made a deal to protect him in turn.”

“You didn’t see anything worth living for in Troy, with your brother and cousin.” It comes out more as a statement than a question, and Andrew doesn’t deny it.

Then, Renee emerges out of the darkness, and they end their private conversation, holding their new truths close to their hearts.

***

_Abram._

_Who was that?_

_No-one, Mom. I swear._

_Don’t you dare lie to me. I saw you two making out._

_I thought I was clear that you shouldn’t get attached to anyone._

_You can’t trust them._

_You’ll never be safe unless you’re with me._

_If I see you doing this one more time, it won’t be pretty._

***

Neil startles out of his sleep with a gasp. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat and the phantom pain of his mother pulling at his hair and slapping him across the face.

So he goes and does the first thing his body tells him to do - which is, apparently, to go for a run.

Since they’re forbidden from going outside alone at night when they’re not on a mission, he jogs down to the gym and tries to get rid of his anxiety on the treadmill.

It doesn’t really work.

After a while, he has no energy left to burn and still a kind of restlessness is cursing through his veins.

He scrubs himself raw in the shower, staring at his naked body in the mirror afterwards. Where he’s not made of metal, his skin is marred with scars. 

He’s seen them before but never knew what to make of them. They’re too old and healed to stem from his accident, so he often wondered what happened in his past life to leave such marks on his body.

Now he knows, with a certainty that robs him of his breath. 

He tears his eyes away from the mirror, slips his clothes back on, and doesn’t stop on the first floor on his way up the stairs. 

Andrew is there, like he always is, and Neil exhales.

The blond boy doesn’t move from where he’s spread on his back on the roof, even as Neil approaches and settles down next to him, resting his head on his knees.

The view from here somehow reminds him of the hours he spent staring out of that window in the hospital, and at the same time it is so much different.

In Easthaven, he’d been alone, on his own, with no memories left, and the city lights had distracted him from the beauty of the night sky.

Here, on this roof, he has a companion by his side, his memories almost fully back, and the sky is painted in hues of dark blue, the moon illuminating the rare clouds over the desert.

“Spit it out,” Andrew mumbles after a few minutes of shared silence.

“I had a nightmare,” Neil sighs.

Andrew hums in understanding, as if he himself had been plagued by bad dreams as well before he ended up on the roof - which is probably what happened, now that Neil thinks about it. It’s clear that Andrew has his own ghosts to fight, as well.

Suddenly, Neil is overcome with the need to reach out, to make Andrew see how similar they really are.

“Can I show you something?” he tries and lets his hand hover over Andrew’s right. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew answers, sitting up so he can face Neil. 

Slowly, Neil unfolds, until he’s sitting upright as well, and takes Andrew’s hand to guide it under his shirt.

He hears a surprised intake of breath as skin touches skin, touches scar after scar after scar.

“Do you know who did this?” Andrew asks in a low voice.

“That … it wasn’t only my father … or the woman from my last flashback … my mother … I think she abused me too,” Neil gets out. 

Somehow, Andrew doesn’t seem surprised.

His fingers lightly skim over Neil’s stomach before retracting.

Then, he grabs the ever-present fine black cloth on his right forearm with his artificial left and tugs it off. He allows Neil only a quick look at the scars that line the inside of his arm before he lets them disappear under the black band once more.

“You didn’t need to show me these in return,” Neil says.

“Didn’t you say it was a truth for a truth?” Andrew retorts and crosses his arms.

“Still,” Neil insists. 

He hesitates a while before speaking up again.

“These are old, though, right?”

Andrew nods, and he looks far away as he talks. “I already told you I grew up apart from my brother. Let’s just say it wasn’t easy. I learned not to trust anyone because I made the mistake of believing someone’s promises one too many times. So I really don’t know why you make me -”

He seems to catch himself before he can say more, but Neil notices the way his eyes flick over to him. 

“Why I make you what?” he says.

Instead of answering, Andrew slowly reaches out, and when Neil doesn’t flinch back, traces his lips with his right thumb before leaning in.

Neil is too startled to react, at first, the gentleness with which Andrew caresses his face and the softness of his lips so surprising and new that he just takes it all in without moving.

In his mind, though, his thoughts are racing. Andrew has said that he doesn’t trust anyone but he’s revealed so much of himself to Neil, more than he had ever expected to get from their deal. Does that mean that he -  
“No,” Andrew says, and suddenly the soft pressure on Neil’s lips is gone and he is startled out of his thoughts.

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” he continues and there’s an angry glint in his eyes for just a second before his expression is rescheduled into blankness.

Before Neil can ask, there’s a voice shouting at him in his mind - no, it’s not shouting at him, but at Riko again. The usual background noise of the Moriyama heir moving around and having insignificant conversations is drowned out by hectic movement.

He leans forward, pressing his hands to his temples and cursing Riko for his timing.

***

_We need to move, we need to move now!_

_Stuart Hatford just announced he’s targetting both Easthaven and Evermore_

_\- we need our best resources -_

_Riko, I need you to take care of the cyborgs -_

 

***

“What’s going on?” 

Neil looks up, realizing that Andrew is, like always, still right next to him.

“Did you know that the Trojans wanted to hit the Exy Tech headquarters and Evermore today?”

Andrew’s look says it all.

Something is very wrong.

***

“This was supposed to happen in a month, tops!” Seth exclaims angrily. “We’re not ready yet - hell, the Trojans aren’t ready yet, either!”

Wymack shoots him a glare from where he is standing in front of his confused group of Foxes hastily assembled in the lounge.

“Also, the only source that this is coming from is Neil - how can we be sure that what he is saying is really true?”  
“Gordon, shut your mouth,” Wymack says and redirects his glare at Neil when he sees him open his mouth to snap back. 

“We need to act, there’s no time for your little fights. We don’t know why Stuart Hatford would suddenly decide that now would be the best time to go through with our plan without informing us. It could be a trap, and you’re right to be skeptical, Seth, but for now we are still going to prepare to attack. I’ll try to contact Jeremy again, and if he tells me that this is false intel or anything seems sketchy when you arrive at the Nest, I want you to retreat and go to your designated hiding spots immediately. Got it?”

“Got it,” the Foxes chorus.

So, this is the plan: while the Moriyamas are busy extinguishing two fires at the same time, the Foxes are supposed to attack and take over the Nest when it is at its most vulnerable. The Trojans will then secure the other two posts in Easthaven and Evermore and essentially drive out the Moriyamas from their own base.

They pair off quickly, arming themselves, putting on their combat gear and finally leaving Wymack and Bee, who will coordinate the attack from the Foxhole, behind in their vehicles.

The morning sun is already making its way up the horizon when the Nest comes into view, basking the ugly black spikes of the building in hues of red, gold and purple.

Neil takes in a deep breath at the stunning sight, and hears Matt do the same over the radio.

“Would be even better if that ugly thing wasn’t there anymore,” his friend jokes.

“Yeah,” Neil grins at Andrew next to him, who is watching him with an impatient expression. “Let’s do it.”

They leave their vehicle at their hiding spot and start their long trek towards the Nest, trying to stay hidden from the guards whose positions they know thanks to Kevin and Thea’s detailed plans of the building.

Everything is quiet when they find the vent they’re supposed to use to enter the facility without being spotted. Something about the silence makes Neil uneasy, so he starts a conversation with Andrew as soon as they’ve found their way inside and have secured the deserted hallway they landed in.

“I think I figured out what you wanted to tell me earlier. You were wondering why of all people I turned out to be the person you trust. I don’t know the reason either, but I trust you, as well,” he whispers.

“This is really not the time,” Andrew deflects, turning a corner with his weapon raised.

“I’m pretty sure this could be the last time ever to tell you this, so you’re obviously wrong,” Neil teases him.

“Well, thank you for your confidence in this whole ordeal,” Andrew whispers back.

Then, suddenly, a loud noise coming from the hallway to the left startles them out of their banter, and another crash from behind them soon follows.

Neil motions to the left. “I’ll take this one, and you the one behind us.”

Andrew silently agrees and turns around, disappearing into the darkness of the hallway, and suddenly Neil is filled with the weird sensation that this is the last time he will ever see him. 

He shakes of his anxiety, ignoring the feeling in his gut, and turns the corner.

His radio crackles to life.

“Get out. Now.”

Wymack’s raspy voice, urgent and curt, is the only warning he gets before someone presses a damp cloth against his mouth and nose and everything becomes dark.

***

“Well, well, Junior. If this isn’t a déjà-vu,” a voice greets him when he finds his way back to consciousness.

It’s the woman from his memories, the one that cut him open like a piece of meat.

Another person is standing next to her, and Neil recognizes his voice as soon as he opens his mouth.

“Two people can play at this game, Nathaniel,” Riko Moriyama says, looking down with a triumphant grin to where Neil is trying to fight against the constraints they’ve used to tie him to a chair.

“Of course we figured out what you did with that chip of yours, and we used it to our advantage - I mean how stupid do you all think we are?! There’s a reason that we’ve been in power for so long and developed all of this technology. Some simple programming like yours can’t trick us,” Riko brags. “So we set you up to think nothing interesting was happening on my part, and then of course you would fall for our trap, simple-minded as you are. We have our eyes and ears everywhere, not only with you insignificant little rebels who think you’re made to save the world or something, so we figured out your grand plan pretty quickly. And no, the Trojans are not attacking us, we are attacking them.”

He smirks smugly, not able to keep himself from revealing the Moriyama’s whole plan.

“Anyways,” the woman says pointedly, seeming slightly annoyed at Riko’s never-ending monologue. Neil almost lets out a laugh but luckily the gag in his mouth prevents his amusement from being noticed.

“Isn’t it great to see each other again? Even though now we’re just in this boring room instead of next to your mother’s corpse.” He flinches back as the woman draws closer. Something starts to stir in the back of his mind at her words.

“Remember this?” she says, pulling out a circular lighter.

And suddenly, he’s back, back in the red dust on that desert road, and they’ve found them, they’ve found them -

***

_Run._

_Abram, you have to run -_

_Don’t look back - don’t worry about me._

_Mum, no -_

_I’m not gonna leave you behind -_

_You have to, before it’s too late -_

 

***

But it had been too late, hadn’t it?

The woman - Lola, her name is Lola - comes closer, her weapon drawn to torture him again just like her and his father did all those months ago, and he remembers, he remembers everything.

The car chase, the bullet piercing Mary’s chest and the car swerving off the road into the desert, his mum bleeding out while Nathan and Lola caught up with them, Nathaniel finally tearing himself away from his dying mother and trying to run, but he’d been too slow, everything had been in vain -

All the effort Mary had put in to save her son from Nathan’s abuse and from sharing his destiny with Kevin Day as a human experiment, all the years spent hiding, not daring to cross the border to get to Stuart since it would be too risky, because yes, he remembers, the Trojan leader is in fact his uncle, - and still, it hadn’t been enough.

The memories keep rushing in, overwhelming Neil as Lola, unaware of his inner turmoil, stops right in front of him.

The lighter clicks on, and Neil wants to scream, remembering the way it had hurt all those months ago, lying in the desert sand being held down as Lola had pressed the lighter down on his skin, torturing him and drawing it out while Nathan was getting ready to kill him like he’d killed Mary -

But why hadn’t he?

Neil remembers blacking out after Nathan’s cleaver had first come down on his legs, and after that, he’d woken up at Easthaven, a cyborg controlled by the Moriyamas -

So this was the reason. Nathan had finally delivered him to his superiors, ready to be experimented on, just as he was supposed to do before Mary ran away with him.

An incredible rage rushes through Neil as his mind is filling in all the blanks that were left, and he thrashes violently against his constraints.

“You know, you’re really no use to us anymore,” Lola sing-songs. “It’s time we got rid of you, don’t you think?”

She leans down, and in this exact moment, someone bursts through the door behind Neil and puts a bullet through Riko. 

He doesn’t even have time to look surprised before he sinks to the floor where he’d been standing only seconds before surveilling Lola’s handiwork.

Lola whips around, which gives the attacker the angle he needs to shoot her down as well.

Hectic movement behind him warns Neil that someone is running towards him, but it’s only when a metal hand frees him of his constraints and an urgent voice asks him “Yes or no?” before pulling him into a hug that he realizes that it is Andrew.

“You found me,” Neil rasps, and Andrew just holds him.

“Didn’t I already tell you I wouldn’t save your sorry ass again?” he answers, but can’t pretend to be annoyed.

“But you did it anyway,” Neil says and smiles into the crook of Andrew’s neck.

***

Once again, they find each other in the kitchen, late at night.

Sir and King have both miraculously found a way to fit on Andrew’s lap where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating ice cream in a way that reminds Neil all too much of their first meeting.

“Did you finish packing already?” Neil asks for lack of a better topic.

The Foxhole isn’t needed anymore, seeing how the Trojans fought off the Moriyama’s attack and actually won, and the Foxes successfully raided the Nest even though it had been a trap. Nathan is dead, caught in the cross-fire where he was directing the Moriyama’s army, and Riko and Lola are gone, courtesy to Andrew. Nobody can hurt Neil anymore. And most importantly, nobody will continue the cyborg recruitment program.

So now, all that’s left to do for the Foxes is to pack up and leave their hiding spot, returning to their loved ones or starting on a new journey.

Andrew hums noncommittally and sets his ice cream aside so he can pet the cats.

“If Renee was the one to rescue those cats, why are they so attached to you?” Neil says while sitting down, mirroring Andrew’s position.

“How would I know? I hate those beasts almost as much as I hate you,” Andrew answers as Neil picks up an annoyed King and puts him on his lap instead.

“Oh do you really?” Neil’s grin is probably incredibly smug, but he can’t help it.

“If you hate me as much as you pretend to hate the cats, you must actually like me a lot - “ he teases the other.

Andrew’s eyes flash with some unknowable emotion, and whatever he sees in Neil’s face makes him lean towards him.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, and immediately his lips meet Neil’s in a collision of want and tenderness. It’s at the same time so similar and so different to the kiss they shared that night on the roof, without the surprise but with so much … more that Neil can barely believe this is happening to him in real life.

Only when Andrew remarks that his legs are starting to fall asleep from the weight of the cats do they break apart.

“So you do like me,” Neil laughs, then grows quiet again. “Can I ask you something?”

When Andrew nods, Neil says: “Why didn’t you want to do this back on the roof?”

Andrew stands up to shake out the numbness of his legs as he tries to answer.

“You just had a nightmare, you weren’t doing well - it felt like I took advantage of you,” he finally says.

“You really didn’t,” Neil responds, standing up as well. “Although I appreciate that you stopped - but I was fine.”

“You and me both know you have a different understanding of the word ‘fine’,” Andrew huffs.

Neil chuckles and steals the pint of ice cream from him.

“Anyways, what are you going to do now that everything’s over?” he says, taking a bite and grimacing at the sweetness.

“Visit Aaron and Nicky in Columbia. After that, I don’t know,” Andrew answers. “And you? Are you going to become Nathaniel again?”

“Why should I?” Neil asks. “Nathaniel may be my past, and I’m glad I can finally remember that part of my life, but he’s not who I am anymore. Neil Josten was just a random name the doctors picked out for me. But the Foxes and you, you made him real. Much more so than Nathaniel ever was.”

He doesn’t have to hide anymore, after all. 

And although he isn’t sure what the future will bring, for now he is content to stay in here, with cats and ice cream and Andrew.

Life couldn’t be better right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, you guys!
> 
> I just wanna say again that Val was really great to work with, and once again please check out her art at [on her tumblr](http://cats-are-assholes.tumblr.com)!
> 
> I had this really big idea for the au that I wanted to portray in this fic after looking at the artwork, and although I feel like I could have included more and done a better job with the world-building, I still think that with the time constraint and the writer's block I sometimes hit it still turned out pretty well ^^
> 
> By the way, if anyone is interested in this, this fic was partly inspired by the novel "Thalamus" by Ursula Poznanski, which had similar events regarding amnesia and technology taking control of one's body; and "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer (just bc of the dystopian setting and the rebel base in the desert).
> 
> Please let me know what you think in the comments or find me on [tumblr](https://franzithebookworm.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> Next Up:
> 
> What happened to Neil?  
> How will Neil and Andrew's relationship progress?  
> And will their attack on the Nest be successfull?
> 
> Stay tuned to find out!
> 
> In the meantime, please check out the other artwork and fics in the collection and give them some love! There's new ones every day!
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments or on [tumblr](https://franzithebookworm.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Until next time ~


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